Noisms has some interesting ideasin this post about his desire for some depth to his grimdark, and turns to Gene Wolfe and Tolkien for relief. Now, it can be argued that he’s watering down, even spoiling his grimdark by twisting the universe to actually be caring and not indifferent. And that’s true, but it sounds like Noisms finds the nihilism of grimdark to be hollow, all shadow puppets without depth or impact. And I totally get that. I don’t think his preference for a greater...| Trollsmyth
THIS!!! Yes, a| Trollsmyth
Ok, not a single roll to cover the entire fight. But a single roll by each player to adjudicate not only the success or failure of their attack, but also how much damage they did to their foe and how much, if any, harm their foe did to them.| Trollsmyth
I’ve been too busy to keep up with the RPG blog-o-sphere lately (more on that later), so I missed this excellent article at Goblin Punch on negotiations between PCs and monsters/NPCs. It makes a nice compliment to these two articles I’ve written on the subject:| Trollsmyth
14. Heart Of The Beast: Cast this spell on a slain monster’s heart (or reasonably equivalent organ or portion), then consume it. At any time, you may take the devoured creature’s shape, once, for 10 minutes. You will retain some physical mark of this transformation afterwards.| Trollsmyth
Face it, if you want something in this harsh and unforgiving world, you have to do unto others as the royal and filthy rich have done unto you: you gotta steal it.| Trollsmyth
Elves represent the greatest deviation I’m making from the classic classes. B/X elves are warrior-wizards. My elves are much more Tolkienesque. They’re an excellent alternative to Clerics for a party healer and have some nice synergies with the Ranger.The Elf Spell-list isn't detailed here. In a more Tolkienesque world, they would actually use the Druid list instead of the traditional Magic-user list. Which I use depends on the flavor we're looking for.| Trollsmyth
What are you general thoughts about rules that don't have the GM rolling any dice. For instance, if a monster attacks a PC, instead of the GM rolling on behalf of the monster, the PC's player rolls for the PC to resist the monster's attack.| Trollsmyth
A player in my weekly face-to-face game mentioned that they’d hardly played anything other than D&D, and 5e at that. I couldn’t let that st...| trollsmyth.blogspot.com
For our purposes let’s just say that lore is “setting background”: information about the setting of a campaign. The paradigm is perhaps the history of the setting, which is literally lore that could be learned in game from sages or history books. But I would count also count its metaphysics, theology, organized religion, the nature of magic, and the like. And while we’re at it, we can add more humdrum facts about languages, prevailing forms of government, the economy, different social...| Mazirian's Garden
This article was made possible by the generous support of our patrons. Please consider joining them by supporting us on Patreon. It used to be part of my job (self-employed) to advocate for the Big Model’s terms. I never chased people around the internet and corrected their usage, an impossible task, but when people came to my spaces, […]| lumpley games
Here’s how we’re laying out troupe-style play in the Edgar Allan Poe’s The Raven’s Ars Magica playtest document. Part I: Troupe-Style Play If you haven’t played role-playing games troupe-style before, this should be a pretty good place to start. Let me lay it out for you. Main characters & Supporting Cast: You can think of your wizard as […]| lumpley games
This article was made possible by the generous support of our patrons. Please consider joining them by supporting us on Patreon. For today’s purposes, let’s say that I care about one thing: the creative energy that a group feels while they’re playing my game. Let’s say that they start at a receptive neutral, content to start the game […]| lumpley games
This article was made possible by the generous support of our patrons. Please consider joining them by supporting us on Patreon. 1. History The Art of Dramatic Writing is a book by Lajos Egri, published 1946. It’s a how-to book for playwrights, and according to our friend Wikipedia, it’s “widely regarded as one of the best works” in […]| lumpley games
This article was made possible by the generous support of my patrons. Please consider joining them by supporting me on Patreon.| lumpley games
Using Apocalypse World to Outline and Draft Your Own RPG| lumpley games
Using Apocalypse World to Outline and Draft Your Own RPG| lumpley games
System as social contract between designers and players| Līber Lūdōrum
Using Apocalypse World to Outline and Draft Your Own RPG| lumpley games